I now contribute to yet another blog.
"SONGS K"
Check it.
Lots of good music to be listened upon.
So I'll continue to maintain this little thing in periodic bursts, and every whenever-I-feel-like-it I'll drop a post over there.
Deal?
Deal.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Friday, August 8, 2008
Google Custom Search
You may have noticed the Google Custom Search thing on the right. You may have wondered if it was different than any other kind of search, Google or otherwise. Here's the scoop:
If you're anything like me you'll be reading an article and come across something that you want to know more about, either to fact check or for mere curiosity's sake. Let's say you're halfway through one of my posts and suddenly you want to look up information for, I don't know, Neil Diamond. Pop 'er in the custom search and it'll open up a new window (so you won't lose your place in the original post) full of legit search results. "Neil Diamond" yields results from Last.fm and Wikipedia (not to mention NeilDiamond.com) and all those good relevant sites.
But say you want information on The Turtles. Holy cow, there must be a zillion different turtles populating the internet! Put them in the search anyway. POW... Wikipedia, ClassicBands.com, "Happy Together" on Youtube, etc. The search has been tweaked to yield music-pertinent results.
Smooth, eh?
Play around with it, use it as a research tool, do whatever.
If you're anything like me you'll be reading an article and come across something that you want to know more about, either to fact check or for mere curiosity's sake. Let's say you're halfway through one of my posts and suddenly you want to look up information for, I don't know, Neil Diamond. Pop 'er in the custom search and it'll open up a new window (so you won't lose your place in the original post) full of legit search results. "Neil Diamond" yields results from Last.fm and Wikipedia (not to mention NeilDiamond.com) and all those good relevant sites.
But say you want information on The Turtles. Holy cow, there must be a zillion different turtles populating the internet! Put them in the search anyway. POW... Wikipedia, ClassicBands.com, "Happy Together" on Youtube, etc. The search has been tweaked to yield music-pertinent results.
Smooth, eh?
Play around with it, use it as a research tool, do whatever.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
1999
Are we partying like it's 1999? Well, no, mostly because 1999's party music was pretty awful. Despite this, many of my favorite songs came out in 1999. I believe this is because I started college in 2000 and instead of being sociable with the other people who lived in my dorm building I locked the door and listened to music all day. I'm perpetually a year behind the trends, and in 2000 I filled up on music from 1999.
You'll notice that these artists and bands are all popular within Christian coolkid circles. This really was the best time for Christian indie and hardcore and folk and all that, and nothing delighted me more than discovering there was life beyond Michael W. Smith (though I'm not saying that I was ever the cool kid, 'cause I never was).
Sleeping By the Riverside - "Something To Say"
This song was re-recorded for 2003's A Breath Between Battles, but I'll always favor the original that appeared on the 1999 split with a band called Carry The Dead. "Something to Say" is the standout track from that album, and it is absolutely glorious, more or less changing the way I perceive hardcore music. The lyrics are honest, full of passion, and understandable. The instrumentation is aggressive but surprisingly melodic. I would later learn that this song came at the tail-end of the spirit-filled hardcore movement of the '90s, and influences from Strongarm and Unashamed (among others) can be heard. From the first "Oh how the fire BURNS" to the final "MOVE ON" this song grabs and twists your guts, double-bass pedals your skull a couple times, and may even provoke you to turn some windmills or something.
Unwed Sailor - "Once in a Blue Moon"
On the other end of the musical spectrum we have Unwed Sailor, an instrumental band featuring bassist Johnathon Ford and a never-constant cast of instrumentalists. The band is into the whole multimedia thing, releasing picture books with their albums (The Marionette and the Music Box, 2003) and providing soundtracks for short conceptual films (Stateless, 2002). The Firecracker EP was their first release (re-issued in 2003), and this is its fourth and final track, a very fitting closer. The first three songs bounce and flutter, but this one swoops and melts, ticking like a grandfather clock lost at sea. Melissa Pallandino's violin absolutely kills me. That's David Bazan on drums, by the way.
Brandtson - "Potential Getaway Driver"
I don't know if this song is about girls or God or what, but that's some catchysweet riff. Bap bap badee bap bap bap BAP. Though Brandtson would later lean too far into boo-hoo territory, it was here in the 1990's where they retained a good amount of rock & roll edge. I don't really have much else to say. It's just a dang good song. Fallen Star Collection is out of print, so if you're looking to pick up the album it'll have to be used or digital only.
Starflyer 59 - "Play the "C" Chord"
This was the first Starflyer song I'd ever heard (back in 1999, and for once I was listening to something current) and it totally blew my mind. Jason Martin sings like he's sleeping, there's a slide guitar going up and down, a dense musical foundation carrying everything downstream... and do my ears spy an acoustic guitar? I couldn't understand how something so heavy sounded so light. This was long before I discovered My Bloody Valentine and Mazzy Star, and this shoegazey goodness was so far left of what I was used to musically that I couldn't help but like it. Lyrically it's a call to rock, for bands to stop writing automatic songs and to "play the "C" chord like it's something new." If you want to take it further you could somehow apply it to how we live our lives, but I'll leave that up to individual discernment.
Damien Jurado - "Tornado"
Jurado is great at crafting a story in only three-to-five minutes' worth of song. Sometimes he'll give us a nice story, but most of the time the lyrics revolve around the foul side of human nature. Sometimes he'll trick us by putting a sad story into an upbeat song. He does this a couple times on Rehearsal for Departures. See "Letters and Drawings." See also this song. "Tornado" is a relatively "full" song for Jurado who usually strips things down to one guitar and one voice. But this song builds and builds, crescendoing with saxophones, Jurado singing as high as he possibly can, some sort of organ (mellotron?) and -- I don't get to say this very often -- some wicked flute work. It all comes back to the lyrics, though, and after the first line we know that the main characters are in trouble. The deep resent and bitterness that develops between couples doesn't usually make for pleasant song fodder, but that kind of stuff is Jurado's bread and butter. As an irrelevant aside, the ever-present David Bazan makes another appearance, but this time he's credited with the "drawing" on the album.
You'll notice that these artists and bands are all popular within Christian coolkid circles. This really was the best time for Christian indie and hardcore and folk and all that, and nothing delighted me more than discovering there was life beyond Michael W. Smith (though I'm not saying that I was ever the cool kid, 'cause I never was).
Sleeping By the Riverside - "Something To Say"This song was re-recorded for 2003's A Breath Between Battles, but I'll always favor the original that appeared on the 1999 split with a band called Carry The Dead. "Something to Say" is the standout track from that album, and it is absolutely glorious, more or less changing the way I perceive hardcore music. The lyrics are honest, full of passion, and understandable. The instrumentation is aggressive but surprisingly melodic. I would later learn that this song came at the tail-end of the spirit-filled hardcore movement of the '90s, and influences from Strongarm and Unashamed (among others) can be heard. From the first "Oh how the fire BURNS" to the final "MOVE ON" this song grabs and twists your guts, double-bass pedals your skull a couple times, and may even provoke you to turn some windmills or something.
Unwed Sailor - "Once in a Blue Moon"On the other end of the musical spectrum we have Unwed Sailor, an instrumental band featuring bassist Johnathon Ford and a never-constant cast of instrumentalists. The band is into the whole multimedia thing, releasing picture books with their albums (The Marionette and the Music Box, 2003) and providing soundtracks for short conceptual films (Stateless, 2002). The Firecracker EP was their first release (re-issued in 2003), and this is its fourth and final track, a very fitting closer. The first three songs bounce and flutter, but this one swoops and melts, ticking like a grandfather clock lost at sea. Melissa Pallandino's violin absolutely kills me. That's David Bazan on drums, by the way.
Brandtson - "Potential Getaway Driver"I don't know if this song is about girls or God or what, but that's some catchysweet riff. Bap bap badee bap bap bap BAP. Though Brandtson would later lean too far into boo-hoo territory, it was here in the 1990's where they retained a good amount of rock & roll edge. I don't really have much else to say. It's just a dang good song. Fallen Star Collection is out of print, so if you're looking to pick up the album it'll have to be used or digital only.
Starflyer 59 - "Play the "C" Chord"This was the first Starflyer song I'd ever heard (back in 1999, and for once I was listening to something current) and it totally blew my mind. Jason Martin sings like he's sleeping, there's a slide guitar going up and down, a dense musical foundation carrying everything downstream... and do my ears spy an acoustic guitar? I couldn't understand how something so heavy sounded so light. This was long before I discovered My Bloody Valentine and Mazzy Star, and this shoegazey goodness was so far left of what I was used to musically that I couldn't help but like it. Lyrically it's a call to rock, for bands to stop writing automatic songs and to "play the "C" chord like it's something new." If you want to take it further you could somehow apply it to how we live our lives, but I'll leave that up to individual discernment.
Damien Jurado - "Tornado"Jurado is great at crafting a story in only three-to-five minutes' worth of song. Sometimes he'll give us a nice story, but most of the time the lyrics revolve around the foul side of human nature. Sometimes he'll trick us by putting a sad story into an upbeat song. He does this a couple times on Rehearsal for Departures. See "Letters and Drawings." See also this song. "Tornado" is a relatively "full" song for Jurado who usually strips things down to one guitar and one voice. But this song builds and builds, crescendoing with saxophones, Jurado singing as high as he possibly can, some sort of organ (mellotron?) and -- I don't get to say this very often -- some wicked flute work. It all comes back to the lyrics, though, and after the first line we know that the main characters are in trouble. The deep resent and bitterness that develops between couples doesn't usually make for pleasant song fodder, but that kind of stuff is Jurado's bread and butter. As an irrelevant aside, the ever-present David Bazan makes another appearance, but this time he's credited with the "drawing" on the album.
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